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Outsourced – Mildly Interesting Comedy

By SearchIndia.com on September 25, 2008Comments Off on Outsourced – Mildly Interesting Comedy

If you are an Indian or if you live in the U.S, you can’t but help be impacted by outsourcing.

Yes, we are referring to that insidious process by which your American job is snatched from you and handed to an Indian or Chinese coolie so that some gluttonous corporation may appease the gods on Wall Street with a higher earnings per share in the upcoming quarters.

Tens of thousands of middle class Americans have lost their comfortable jobs to tens of thousands of Indian coolies, you know, the call center workers, programmers, radiologists, analysts and copy editors who are happy to work for much lesser wages to the delight of soulless U.S. corporations and the distress of U.S. workers.

Outsourced (directed by John Jeffcoat) is not a Michael Moore style trenchant documentary looking at the damaging effects of outsourcing on the Americans but a mildly interesting, cheeky take on the process of outsourcing.

Seattle native Todd Anderson (Josh Hamilton) is told that the order fulfillment center he heads is being outsourced to India and ordered to go there and train his replacement if he wants to retain his job and benefits.

In India, the call center Todd’s asked to help get going is located in a small town called Gharapuri, a few hours from Mumbai.

Todd’s mission in India is to get the minutes per incident (call) down to 6, a seemingly impossible task given the raw Indian workers he has to work with.

There are the usual cultural differences between the Indian ish-style and the American way of doing things that provide a few laughs now and then.

From the moment he lands in India, Todd is addressed as Toad by all and sundry much to his irritation. And to our irritation too after a while.

Even for a movie, the hyperbole in Outsourced can get irritating. Like for instance, the over-the-top scenes of cows wandering into the partially constructed call center building.

Livening up things a bit is the assertive call center employee Asha (Ayesha Dharker), soon-to-be-married but not unwilling to have a Holiday in Goa fling with Todd in the Kamasutra suite of a hotel.

Since the foundation of outsourcing is lower wages (and there’s always someone in some country willing to work for less than you), what do you think happens to the Indian call center employees at the end of the movie?

Outsourced is available for instant watching if you are a Netflix subscriber and have the Roku box.